Kilian Harrer

Biography

My research interests revolve around the convoluted relationships and overlaps among politics, ideology, religion, and gender in the eighteenth century (esp. in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France). In my master’s thesis, I focused on a conflict over diocesan territory between the archbishop of Rouen and a convent of Benedictine nuns, the Abbey of Montivilliers in Normandy. I used this case study as a lens through which to re-examine the history of eighteenth-century Gallicanism, Specifically, I argued that the nuns and their collaborators possessed and effectively used the legal, political, and intellectual means to help redefine ecclesiastical hierarchy, sovereignty, territoriality, and church-state relations–primarily to the benefit of the temporal prince, the king of France.

Education

M.A., University of Munich (2015)
B.A., University of Munich (2012)

Field

Early modern Europe; French revolutionary history

MA Title

“The Keys of Heaven in the Hands of Women. A Struggle over Hierarchy in Eighteenth-Century France”